Discussion Thoughts about the : Chimera ant arc

[DraMas26]

The problem for me is why do the "Ants" not look a thing at all like ants?

I always thought it would have been better to call them Chimera Beasts or something. ''Ants'' sounds more like a misnomer.

 

[futurefrog]

The problem for me is why do the "Ants" not look a thing at all like ants?

I always thought it would have been better to call them Chimera Beasts or something. ''Ants'' sounds more like a misnomer.

Originally look like ants but so much crossing of genes creates different appearance for them.

 

[Demonspeed]

The problem for me is why do the "Ants" not look a thing at all like ants?

I always thought it would have been better to call them Chimera Beasts or something. ''Ants'' sounds more like a misnomer.

Spoiler

 

[DraMas26]

Spoiler

I never quite understoood that scene. Is that really happening or is it just an illusion?

 

[Drmke]

I never quite understoood that scene. Is that really happening or is it just an illusion?

I always considered it sort of like a visual metaphor; like his instinctual side is taking over blah blah.

I have never been able to understand why people get so bent out of shape over "power balance" in manga or anime. Maybe in a show like DBZ that stresses actual power levels, but HH just has powers and like in real life, many other aspects other than pure strength determine a fight. Togashi has made than abundantly clear during the entire manga. It really doesn't matter who is objectively stronger because nobody really is after they develop their strengths properly.

 

[Phantron]

Power level absolutely determines the outcome of fights. The reason they don't always do this is that the vast majority of HXH characters are incredibly dumb and are relatively pacifists for some inexplicable reasons. In a world where you can basically die in one hit against an equal tier opponent, people inexplicably don't try to snap your arm or other form of irreversible damage and instead try to outduel each other as if they're in a Dragonball sanctioned tournament where killing the enemy gets you disqualified (except it does not).

Zeno versus Kuroro is a good example of how you can absolutely beat down someone with a lower defense than you from range no matter what ability they might have. Meryem versus Netero is a good example of the type of damage you want to be doing when you're stronger than your enemy, and even there Meryem was hardly fighting optimally since he knows he needs to beat Netero into submission as opposed to just killing him, which is actually a significantly harder task as he needs to purposely hold back his strength (no way Netero can take a hit from Meryem head on), which is why he actually has to figure out how to deal with his move. If there's no 'submission' requirement he can simply do a large area of effect emission attack, for example, and there's no way he'd lose if the two has to trade hits.

In fact Zeno's strategy pretty much applies universally for any fight in HXH. If your ranged (Emission) attack > their physical defense, then just do ranged attack if the enemy appears to be using an unknown ability because they can't counter stuff from range and you'll eventually be able to do enough damage to them, or force them to switch to melee.

 

[shionoro]

i loved the ant arc.
It is true that there are many side stories which can get confusing, but over all, this arc, exspecially the final, was astonishing.

character developement did not only happen between killuah and gon, but also with so many side characters that you can reread that arc several times and still find new stuff.

The arc did have good fights which were out of the box because many enemies were overwhelmingly strong, it had nice pictures, meaning, nice metaphors and transitions, like when when get to know about the rose and togashi shos human curelty compared to the logical ideas of meruem.

The main villains were well thought out, all 4 of them.

This arc was not just shonen, it had something to say besides 'yoyo, friendship and determination'

 

[apellon]

Honnestly, i do agree with all the points given so far ... But as i stated in my op comment , it wasnt so that i hated it or didnt think nothing was good about it ....
But now all the comments speak for thenself of how much debate there is on this arc... So this on itself indicate that this arc might have not only strenght but also issues .... Now you may object all you want im never heard of any of this kind of debate or frustration concerning : york new , for example....

Its true that togashi tries to go deeper in some subject and new projects ... he tries to make the reader think or even suprise the reader... On many ways he succeed ( the tragic , the friendship, the loss, the fear even the fragile existence of one self ) but in the same time in many other he fails to do so , to say that there is some philosophical value in this arc is in my opinion a littlr highly overstated , unless shonen jump is the only source of reference. The subjects approached are done way bettet in many other media or series... That said its still commandebale for him to try to approach this . Doing so though he disolved the scenario wich became bothersome and tiring at time , i didnt find it thaf interesting or even that suprising in fact it was pretty obvious to me that was the direction he wanted for this arc...

Now the most problematic issue to me was the theme of this arc : chimera ants .
This theme bound togashi to go into designing charachters, art and scenario to follow this theme wich is in
Fact really lame ... Togashi is a genius but i dont think even him
Was up to the task to try to make ants interesting to me .. The traits inherent to this zoo/ants theme is well depicted by him but it doesnt change the fact that the concept was a mistake at first ( food chain bs and all) ... I would add that this led to too many bothering characters that kept take too much space in this arc...that is thr reason why so many of us hxh fan ,I never cared much of the characters , while we really love chrollo , hisoka or even bomber .

So yes its good to tries to improve the genre , but it is not if its to forget the basics , to forget the essence of what made the manga so succesful is sad . I hope the nest dark continuent will bring new themes , interesting subjects while keeping it rooted to what we always loved.
Overall i still liked this arc , for the reasons stated in other comments from me or other peers , but i still feels it was probably not the best arc.

 

[HybridBloodsZak]

Now to me the most problematic issue to me was the theme of this arc : chimera ants .
This theme bound togashi to go into designing charachters, art and scenario to follow this theme wich is in
Fact really lame ... Togashi is a genius but i dont think even him
Was up to the task to try to make ants interesting to me .. The traits inherent to this zoo/ants theme is well depicted by him but it doesnt change the fact that the concept was a mistake at first ...

I never cared much of the characters , while i really love chrollo , hisoka or even bomber .

So yes its good to tries to improve the genre , but it is not if its to forget the basics to dorget the essence of what made the manga so succesful.
Overall i still liked this arc , for the reasons stated in other comments by you peers , but i still feels it was probably not the best arc.

The way this comes off is "I don't like the character designs and the concept of a Chimera Ant so they're lame and uninteresting"

While it's perfectly fine to not like the designs or the concepts of the ants that does not make them lame and uninteresting. You're telling me you found something lacking in the character development of ants like Ikalgo, Meleoron, Welfin or the Royal Guards/Meruem? Huh? The character arcs some of the Ants go through had me engaged the entire time and I was always dying to see how they react to or trigger events that unfold in the arc the Royal Guards especially. I'll even say Meruem is the most developed villain in the entire show at this point more so than fan favorite engimas Hisoka and Chrollo.

Moving past char development, you found the new Nen abilities introduced on the hero and villain sides boring too? I think you might want to reread the arc because not only are the powers pretty unique but the way they're applied is also interesting due to the way Nen is structured.

For example Smoke powers aren't all that original but the way Deep Purple is used I found more creative than say One Piece where Smoker is harder to hit because he can make his body the element. Pitou using Dr. Price as an anchor to keep herself from being blasted away when its main purpose is to heal. You didn't think that was interesting? There are SO MANY of these throughout the entire arc I'm flabbergasted you didn't find even 1 of them cool

"Don't forget the essence of what made the manga successful"

Um I don't know what you think makes the manga special from other battle shonen but I found this arc to be a perfect distillation of what makes HxH Hunter x Hunter for better or worse(not a typo). Strategic encounters, complex villains, a gritty world and story-line are all present in this arc more than any other.

 

[Phantron]

The Ants were chosen not because Ants make interesting characters but that Togashi likes writing about Ants for some reason. And he should take full responsibilty for starring a bunch of characters that are not very interesting to the population in general. It's kind of like how REAL is not as well received as Slam Dunk because the population in general is not as interested in wheelchair basketball compared to basketball, even though it's written by the same guy. If you want to write about Ants or wheelchair basketball you should accept that majority of your reader is going to think it's a dumb subject.

I have two major problems with the Ant arc:

1. The Ants are way too powerful and within the world of HXH there's no conceiveable way they could've lost the battle. If HXH is supposed to be 'not like other Shonen' then humanity is doomed. Although the method humanity was saved was unorthodox it's definitely a 'Shonen' ending where humans win. Not that being 'Shonen' itself is bad, but it pretty much undoes the effort of "HXH isn't like your Shonen"

2. The philsophical stuff in the Ant arc is basically stupid. You don't argue about the moral correctness in a world extinction event. It'd be like if a killer asteroid was coming this way and we shoot all our nukes at it to blow it up but ended up contaminating half of the world and then people say 'maybe it's better if we didn't do that'. No it wouldn't be because if the killer asteroid hit everyone would be dead. Likewise trying to argue philsophical differences with the Ants when Ants basically view humans as a source of food is pointless. When the random girls asked Meryem to spare their lives, Meryem said, "Do you spare the animals you eat just because they cry?" That's pretty much a completely irreconciliable viewpoint. He doesn't kill human because he hates them. He's doing so because they're food. Even with his alleged 'growth', he still told Netero that he will try to limit the amount of food the Ants will consume. So while that means no human hamburger for lunch every day, you can beat human hamburger is still going to be regular delicacy for the Ants. The Ants and Humans are simply too far apart that trying to argue any kind of morality is pointless.

 

[DraMas26]

Power level absolutely determines the outcome of fights. The reason they don't always do this is that the vast majority of HXH characters are incredibly dumb and are relatively pacifists for some inexplicable reasons. In a world where you can basically die in one hit against an equal tier opponent, people inexplicably don't try to snap your arm or other form of irreversible damage and instead try to outduel each other as if they're in a Dragonball sanctioned tournament where killing the enemy gets you disqualified (except it does not).

Zeno versus Kuroro is a good example of how you can absolutely beat down someone with a lower defense than you from range no matter what ability they might have. Meryem versus Netero is a good example of the type of damage you want to be doing when you're stronger than your enemy, and even there Meryem was hardly fighting optimally since he knows he needs to beat Netero into submission as opposed to just killing him, which is actually a significantly harder task as he needs to purposely hold back his strength (no way Netero can take a hit from Meryem head on), which is why he actually has to figure out how to deal with his move. If there's no 'submission' requirement he can simply do a large area of effect emission attack, for example, and there's no way he'd lose if the two has to trade hits.

In fact Zeno's strategy pretty much applies universally for any fight in HXH. If your ranged (Emission) attack > their physical defense, then just do ranged attack if the enemy appears to be using an unknown ability because they can't counter stuff from range and you'll eventually be able to do enough damage to them, or force them to switch to melee.

It's called Plot induced stupidity.

Something that exists in a lot of Shonen manga.

Remember HxH is still Shonen so it can't be 100% different from other Shonens.

 

[capricorn]

The theme of this arc was Chimera Ants? Don't you mean the major concept was chimera ants? The major theme as far as I was concerned was identity which by the way is a major recurrent theme in hunter x hunter itself. We see this theme being played out with the whole premise of mastering nen abilities/types through understanding one's self. In the chimera arc we see this theme mostly through the whole issue of the chimera's requests for names and the whole issue of the resilience and continuity of the soul through the experiences of different lives. I believe this chapter http://mangafox.me/manga/hunter_x_hunter/vTBD/c337/1.html gives an excellent recollection of this theme.

Personally I loved the chimera ant arc like any other arc, but the thing that stood out for me was really how well Togashi extracted the feelings of fear and desperation. Like anybody else who loved this arc I too loved the main villains, the character development and the themes (no matter how generic). I think Togashi does a really good job of exploring certain generic themes like friendship in a way that is actually not generic at all. His interesting depiction of friendship (mostly through his usage of Gon and Killua) as something that is dangerous, risky, sacrificial and above all Fun and I believe that really captures the very spirit of this series (simply DANGEROUS FUN).

 

[Phantron]

It's called Plot induced stupidity.

Something that exists in a lot of Shonen manga.

Remember HxH is still Shonen so it can't be 100% different from other Shonens.

What makes HXH alleged different is that it is rare for villians to have plot induced stupidity. Of course if the Ants do not have plot induced stupidity then humanity would be wiped out and that'd be the end of HXH. It's amplified by the fact that the major Ants (Royal and up) do not actually have plot stupidity at the personal level, but apparently none of them ever picked up a source that tells you about a deadly bomb that can level cities and is also poisonous.

Here's the problem: the more you try to have a rigorous world, the bigger the impact when plot induced stupidity/bailout occur. Nobody is going to complain about Dragonball villians being stupid because they're supposed to be that way. Nobody's going to complain about plot induced bailout when the story's premise is about these items that can grant (almost) any wish. This is also why Alluka is not very well received, because up until this point we see no indication that plot induced bailout is common. It seems entirely plausible that Gon, even if he was cured, could just end up missing an arm from now on.

I suspect originally the Ant arc may have some kind of peaceful resolution, until Togashi realized that the Ants really aren't reconciliable with humans at all. There's a particularly problematic statement that Meryem made that makes this impossible. When he was alone in the palace, he's questioning that if he doesn't even know his name and rules a bunch of puppets, what's the point to be the king? And then he decided that since the Gods have chosen him to be the king, it's not up to him to question why he must rule. As we can see, Meryem actually does not care about ruling anybody. He's way too up there in terms of mental/physical prowess that he'd have nothing to show for ruling anybody. The only reason he wants to rule is because that's his duty. And that makes any attempt to resolve the story pointless. How do you negotiate with an alien leader who truly believes it's his duty that he must rule the world and wipe out the vast majority of your population? But if negotiation was never possible, why even waste all this time developing Ants on their viewpoint of the world?

 

[mousiehamster]

I suspect originally the Ant arc may have some kind of peaceful resolution, until Togashi realized that the Ants really aren't reconciliable with humans at all. There's a particularly problematic statement that Meryem made that makes this impossible. When he was alone in the palace, he's questioning that if he doesn't even know his name and rules a bunch of puppets, what's the point to be the king? And then he decided that since the Gods have chosen him to be the king, it's not up to him to question why he must rule. As we can see, Meryem actually does not care about ruling anybody. He's way too up there in terms of mental/physical prowess that he'd have nothing to show for ruling anybody. The only reason he wants to rule is because that's his duty. And that makes any attempt to resolve the story pointless. How do you negotiate with an alien leader who truly believes it's his duty that he must rule the world and wipe out the vast majority of your population? But if negotiation was never possible, why even waste all this time developing Ants on their viewpoint of the world?

It became possible after Meryem gained the power of empathy through Pufu and learned to apply it to ants as well as people through Komugi. Not that there was any sign of that happening, nor could the hunters have reasonably forseen such development, of course. I think the ant arc is just a story - an interesting one that explored the psyche of both humans and hybrid human-ants; and that there wasn't any particular message being sent or meaningful theme being explored.

 

[HybridBloodsZak]

Power level absolutely determines the outcome of fights. The reason they don't always do this is that the vast majority of HXH characters are incredibly dumb(Um okay lol....) and are relatively pacifists for some inexplicable reasons. In a world where you can basically die in one hit against an equal tier opponent, people inexplicably don't try to snap your arm or other form of irreversible damage and instead try to outduel each other as if they're in a Dragonball sanctioned tournament where killing the enemy gets you disqualified (except it does not).

Zeno versus Kuroro is a good example of how you can absolutely beat down someone with a lower defense than you from range no matter what ability they might have. Meryem versus Netero is a good example of the type of damage you want to be doing when you're stronger than your enemy, and even there Meryem was hardly fighting optimally since he knows he needs to beat Netero into submission as opposed to just killing him, which is actually a significantly harder task as he needs to purposely hold back his strength (no way Netero can take a hit from Meryem head on), which is why he actually has to figure out how to deal with his move. If there's no 'submission' requirement he can simply do a large area of effect emission attack, for example, and there's no way he'd lose if the two has to trade hits.

In fact Zeno's strategy pretty much applies universally for any fight in HXH. If your ranged (Emission) attack > their physical defense, then just do ranged attack if the enemy appears to be using an unknown ability because they can't counter stuff from range and you'll eventually be able to do enough damage to them, or force them to switch to melee.

...1. The Ants are way too powerful and within the world of HXH there's no conceiveable way they could've lost the battle. If HXH is supposed to be 'not like other Shonen' then humanity is doomed. Although the method humanity was saved was unorthodox it's definitely a 'Shonen' ending where humans win. Not that being 'Shonen' itself is bad, but it pretty much undoes the effort of "HXH isn't like your Shonen"

Spoiler

Spoiler

Did you guys forget what Bisky says about strength in the context of a fight?

Anyone who says "The Ants were way too OP, there's no way they could've been beaten" is thinking about a fight in a shallow lateral sense. It's common though because other shonen like to categorize strength as a definitive number thus embedding said habits into people. Bounties in OnePiece, Kugi Punches in Toriko are some examples. Hunter x Hunter alludes to this with Knuckle's Potclean but as shown in the various battles, The smarter person has the higher chance of a favorable outcome(Not Dying, Winning etc). If they were in any other battle shonen, you'd have a hard time convincing me Knuckle surviving against Youpi. Aura capacity is a factor but it's not THE factor in determining who is the better/stronger fighter

Even Meruem was a victim to being outsmarted. Netero's wise preparation beforehand was the lynchpin of him "winning" in the grand scheme of things. Meruem already lost as soon as the two of them met

"You want to know why you lost this battle? It's cause you're an idiot" - Morel McCarnathy to Cheetu

 

[Cinnabar]

But if negotiation was never possible, why even waste all this time developing Ants on their viewpoint of the world?

From a writer's POV, the Ants would come off as the OMG EVIL ALIEN VILLAINS stereotype instead of a specie you could understand. Hence the development. It wasn't for the negotiation to work (because negotiation is clearly impossible in this situation); it was for the antagonist to become a complex character. I don't think Meruem's ending would be effective (or would even happen at all) if he didn't get any character development. It wouldn't be as cathartic if we didn't see him change from I AM KING HUMANS ARE FOOD to someone who learns to feel respect and compassion for burger ingredients (Netero and Komugi respectively), even if it was only for a couple of people and not the general populace.

Togashi won't be able to explore the themes he wanted to explore if he didn't develop the Ants. The story is as much about the Ants as it is about the human characters. It would make sense to develop their psyches as well.

I think the ant arc is just a story - an interesting one that explored the psyche of both humans and hybrid human-ants; and that there wasn't any particular message being sent or meaningful theme being explored.

I do think some meaningful themes were explored (power, identity, etc.) that have potential messages in them, though I do agree that there probably wasn't any particular message that Togashi was trying to send. Whatever message you get is really up to you.

 

[futurefrog]

I'll put it plainly and simply, the Ant arc is about what is means to be human, what it means to have an identity and what it means to feel.
All of these are explored through out the arc with pretty much every single character in this arc (mostly focus characters).

Look at Gon's journey, throughout this arc he loses his identity and ultimately rejects his humanity in place of a monster, because he doesn't want to feel the pain anymore.

Killua's journey is the inverse of this, he discovers his identity and accepts his humanity and the flaws that come with it, he releases himself of his brothers hold and learns to feel again.

Meruem's journey is another great example, much like Killua he comes to discover his identity and ultimately accept his humanity and learns how to feel for others, and how to love.

A case can be made for several other characters, everyone of the main extermination crew undergo this journey.

That is the Ant arc, what it means to be human, what it means to have an identity and what it means to feel.

 

[Phantron]

In the chart Biscuit made, E (the weakest guy) has no chance of beating D (the strongest guy) even if D is at his worst and E is at his strongest.

The power of the Ants are off the scale. The difference between even a Royal and humans is far beyond the difference between D and E in that chart, let alone Meryem. Pufu said that there's about a 10% chance Morel could've beaten him if there are several guys as strong as him on the side. You're not anywhere near someone's league if you need several guys as strong as you to just have a slim chance of beating someone when he's already trapped in your ideal terrain. I know later in the Election Arc they made it sound like it's easy to find guys stronger than Morel, despite the fact that his accomplishment in this battle alone may be enough to get him the Triple Star. So really, you need several Triple Star level guys to even have 10% chance of winning and that's reasonable? Especially when it seems certain Pariston and Chidol are much weaker than Morel (Pariston says both he and Chidol lacks strength. Even if he's lying about himself, it can be assumed his assessment on Chidol must be correct).

Likewise Yupi was never in danger of losing until he got infected by plot stupidity, e.g. he purposely killed every clone of Morel's even though he actually know where the real Morel was. He then spared Knuckles even though that wasn't even part of the agreement. Now, to be fair Yupi caught a break too in that Knuckles didn't just wait until he bankrupt when Yupi decided Knuckles was not a threat, though I'm pretty sure if he waited for the normal time to bankrupt it'd have taken so long that it wouldn't have mattered because Pufu would've come back and killed everyone long before Yupi went bankrupt if they didn't try to attack him again.

Of course the whole point of the Ants was that aside from Uber Gon versus Pitou, none of matchups ever had a chance of winning, but if you understand that then why even have the fight? Sure the whole point was that only defeating Meryem matters in the grand scheme of things, but what's the point of a fight that is already doomed to fail?

For the whole empathy thing, Meryem does not have empathy for humans. Even when he's negotiating with Netero it's still about the same as what a negotiation would look like between humans to sentinent cows. He only says the Ants won't kill unnecessarily, but he says humans are no longer necessary in the evolutionary chain, so the only purpose left is:

1. Serve as food for Ants.
2. The rare special humans, like Komugi or Netero, may have a place in this new world, but only very few people would qualify.

The absolute best case would be if all the excess humans gets locked up in a zoo or something and just spend whole day locked up. Since Meryem sees no value in an ordinary human, you'd expect after a while humans will only be born to be for food sort of like how chickens/cows/pigs are only raised for food, and any occasional special human gets to escape an ugly fate. After all, why would Meryem want to waste resources feeding a bunch of normal humans if he has no interest in killing humans for fun? In fact more humans are likely to survive overall if Meryem was a tyrant, because then at least he'd have to raise a lot of humans so he can kill them later.

If there are sentinent cows they'd rightfully see humans as some kind of crazy genocidal maniacs. It doesn't matter there are some vegetarians out there and that some cows get on special animal shows or whatever. From the viewpoint of cows, human must embody evil and any negotiation with them would be impossible. This is what should happen in the humans to Ants negotiation, only the roles are reversed. You can't negotiate with a race whose leader sees your race's sole purpose for existence as food, minus an occasional super special guy that'd be equivalent of an animal show star.

 

[BurnSchulz]

For me, the Chimera Ant arc is one of the best things ever happened to a Manga.
Especially the second half of this arc is so deep... nothing ever could compare with this.
It is so full of emotions, and they're so well explained in each situation.
All new characters are so well writen.
And i like the development of each Character especially Meruems.

 

[Kiba]

Chimera Ant Arc is great ,I enjoyed reading it and i am really excited for many moments in the arc how they will be animated